Just got back from seeing Episode 4 at the cinema. It was the “Maclunky” 2020 version but, f**k me, it looked and sounded gorgeous. This is NOT the same grade that is on the blu-rays/ Disney+. the colours for about 90% of the movie looked great. Not the flat/ sepeia looking grade we have on the official physical media releases. Skin tones looked great, the highlights were punchy and not suffering with the flat highs of the blu-rays. The Tavtive IV corridors looked beautiful. Even the static grain problem that the latest blu-rays suffer with wasn’t noticeable at all. On thing however is that most of the special edition additions ( especially mos eisley) looked horrendously bad. Not just because they were suing 90’s CG tech, but they looked low res compared to the rest of the film. Blurry/ soft and a few shots didn’t even look HD.
There seemed to be some alterations in the sound mix too. Sound effects that aren’t present on the blu-ray mix. The music was much more prominent, a bit too much in places.
They’ve got a movie marathon on sunday starting with rogue one followed by eps 4, 5 & 6. Can’t go though because its my bloody wedding anniversary. ARGHHHH. Can’t really sit in a cinema the whole day. But luckily they are showing ep 5 next tuesday evening and then the following week ep 6, so i’ll be able to check them out. If the other two films look as good as Ep4 did then, why the hell do the blu-rays look so bad? If they looked that good then it would have saved me years of work regrading them.
That’s bizarre. I wonder if Disney is sitting on another edition they plan to roll out in the future. Maybe 50th anniversary? It’s only a few years away. I can’t imagine they would do a theater only regrade.